I've made a single file python library that implements an idiomatic shell API in python: https://github.com/tarruda/python-ush https://github.com/tarruda/python

I've made a single file python library that implements an idiomatic shell API in python: https://github.com/tarruda/python-ush https://github.com/tarruda/python-ush One nice thing about it is the overloading of pipe operator to allow easy creation of pipelines and/or redirection (plus it is cross platform, so you don't depend on the system having a certain shell).